This June 15, 2007 file photo shows actor and comedian Robin Williams posing to promote his film, "License To Wed" in Santa Monica, Calif. Canadian comedians are mourning the death of American comic and actor Robin Williams as the loss of one of comedy's greats.Williams was pronounced dead at his home in California on Monday. He was 63. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Reed Saxon

Was it that red-eye-removing performance in One Hour Photo, or his eerie turn in Insomnia? There was some point in Robin Williams’ career where his darker side seemed to bleed onto the screen. And with a sense of embarrassment as much as awe, we watched.

It was all an act, it seemed, from the man who became famous as Mork, a whirling mop of man-hair and rainbow suspenders: An alien whose childlike sensibilities made us all appreciate our inner child and humanity — or else change the channel to a rerun of the Rockford Files.

A standup comic who worked shoulder to shoulder with Richard Pryor, Williams had the kind of edge that cut you down with machine-gun-fire comedy. His live act would be enough to make you clutch your stomach muscles in pain: a rat-at-tat-tat of observational comedy that could take you from cats upchucking in your new shoes to sharp political critiques of the latest current events.

He was smart. You could tell. Even when he was playing the fool in such noted, though critically unimpressive, efforts such as Mrs. Doubtfire and Patch Adams.

Williams gave everything an intense style of commitment that seemed so pure of heart, it was almost sad when the vehicle was a disaster.

And yet, sometimes that was the whole fun of it. RV remains an under-appreciated comic masterpiece — because when it comes to selling the hilarity in a face covered in feces, you need purity of soul. And Williams brought it to everything he did.

His defining role in Good Will Hunting — despite sharing avuncular ground with Judd Hirsch’s shrink in Ordinary People — won him an Oscar and proved that his dramatic success in the World According to Garp wasn’t just beginner’s luck. He had real acting chops.

Yet the public resisted this side of Williams. Every gifted comic possesses a serious side. That desperate turn away from the darkness powers their act, their need to make others laugh at the pain that is the human comedy.

Williams was truly perfect in the altogether haunting One Hour Photo — a film about a box-store photo finisher who develops an unhealthy fascination for the family whose pictures he’s printed, and doubled for his own use.

It was such a complete surrender to character, it was impossible to detect a hint of Williams’ humanity, and it only made the movie that much creepier.

But no one really wants to watch the comic be serious, let alone psychotic. This is a long-standing problem that has affected everyone from Peter Sellers to Adam Sandler, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

Williams’ last appearance on the big screen was a supporting role in The Face of Love, with Ed Harris and Annette Bening. He played the unsuccessful suitor, the nice guy next door who just didn’t possess the sex appeal of his rival.

Bening said he was a charm to work with. But he did return to TV this year with The Crazy Ones, created by David E. Kelley, which lasted only one season.

He was scheduled to finish Mrs. Doubtfire 2 and another Night at the Museum before he was found dead in his Marin County home Monday.

The sheriff’s department is investigating, but the suspected cause of death is suicide by asphyxiation. His family said he was battling severe depression.

How much of this we could actually see, and how much of this we’ll now create in every image of Williams that lingers, doesn’t really matter. He’s now part of the past tense, a place where the spotlight of celebrity finally turns away in search of fresh meat, new light.

Williams leaves a trail of brilliance in his wake: A glow that could have come right out of What Dreams May Come — a movie that features Williams dying, and moving through the afterlife in search of his wife.

His catalogue is so large and vast — stretching from Happy Feet to The Birdcage, Awakenings and The Fisher King to Good Morning, Vietnam to Hook — it’s impossible to come up with a single film, a single role that speaks to his rubber ball soul.

And yet, he was a complete and utter presence in the lives of an entire generation who knows what “Nanu Nanu” means.

He is the rainbow, suspended, now looking in from the other side — leaving the rest of us to find our own punchline.

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This June 15, 2007 file photo shows actor and comedian Robin Williams posing to promote his film, "License To Wed" in Santa Monica, Calif. Canadian comedians are mourning the death of American comic and actor Robin Williams as the loss of one of comedy's greats.Williams was pronounced dead at his home in California on Monday. He was 63. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Reed Saxon

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